 Some formalities I'd have to go through to her name. Her name will go to town council and get sworn in and all you'll care about kind of the procedures after that. But so our potential number is Deborah, I have the pleasure of meeting. How long ago did we meet now two weeks ago, however, many weeks ago now if the time is flying for me. Yeah, if you want to go ahead and send a little thing about yourself or anything. Oh, thank you. I'm relatively new and Amherst we, my wife and I arrived two years ago, and I've been an activist for my entire adult life about 40 years, and very civically involved particularly around civil rights LGBTQI rights anti racism or police accountability work. And I came from Portland, Oregon, most recently that they're for 10 years. They've been Washington DC for 26 years and grew up in New York City. So, I like to be involved, and I'm coming out of an incredibly overwhelming two year stint at my day job that I'm leaving. And I have some spaciousness coming to my life so I applied, because when I saw the mission of this commission I thought oh that's my personal mission statement too. So, that's my bear. Yeah, thank you for that and then we'll just go around and introduce ourselves. I bill it by think I have already introduced myself to you. But yes, I'll go ahead and just popcorn it to Ronnie. I'm Ronnie and I may have been an Amherst even less time than you were at one and a half years now I think. Yeah, I also have worked quite a bit in human rights but particularly in the international context. I had a lot to do with the convention, the creation of the convention on the rights of the child and studied with its author who taught at Harvard Law but I also took that same course with him at Tufts. And then participated in its enforcement by representing that convention on behalf of save the children. And that whole thing. And I haven't been very active in the US per se, at all, except that locally I did get very involved in police activity in my last place where I live for 29 years but because I worked internationally I wasn't as consistently engaged, but I did get the police training and the use of gun and all that kind of stuff. I was very interested in that whole question of how the rights of citizens, citizens residents I guess you don't say citizens anymore, as of people interacts with the rights of police because where I live before, Maryland has this whole police I forget what it's called now it's slipped out of my slips from my mind at this moment but there is this whole thing about police officers rights that doesn't exist in Massachusetts didn't exist in Maryland but during the time that I lived there they got rid of it and got it back on the books. So police officers rights, it has tremendous implications for transparency for regular people. In other words, not much so anyway I'm very interested in all of this. And I've worked on it and I also studied it on the as a graduate student. That's the long introduction of me sorry I tend to talk that's the other thing about me. It's hard to stop me. Sorry. Sorry. Oliver. Hi, my name is Laverne Kelly. I'm new to the board I've only been on the board for since December. And welcome. I'm Tyler. I'm a student at Amherst College. I'm currently studying abroad in Geneva. I'm double majoring physics and law. I don't have nearly as impressive a resume as Ronnie. But yeah I've mostly been studying international law for this last semester and quite a bit of international human rights law in there. And that's the point where I now can confidently say that I know a bit about constitutional rights, international human rights international humanitarian law which has its own subset of international humanitarian rights, at least I don't touch about five and all of the stuff with the American Convention on Human Rights that the US is sort of technically probably supposed to follow but completely ignores ICC PR which the US very blatantly ignored just all this different stuff and half the time I get them confused and get all the jurisdictions mixed up. So at the time, it's just between two laws that the US government doesn't follow. So. Thank you, Tyler, Jen. Hi, I'm Jennifer Moisten. I'm the assistant director for the Office of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and I am one of the staff liaisons for the Human Rights Commission. And Pamela. There's no need for me to introduce myself because Deb and I and Jennifer met a couple of months ago so she knows who I am and what we do. Perfect. Awesome. Thank you so much Deb for joining tonight and sorry we are not meeting a quorum yet but we'll see what happens as this progresses. Are we allowed to do public comment? Is there anyone in the public? No. Okay, so then we will skip right on into that. Member updates. I would give you an update on the affordable housing trust. So what we are trying to do with them is hold together a listening session to where it brings together the town's affordable housing trust, the town's Board of Public Health, the Human Rights Commission, the Community Safety and Social Justice Committee, and am I missing anyone Jen or is that it? So these four groups are going to come together. And the plan is to broaden the conversation of affordable housing in Amherst to kind of narrow in what is actually the problem and so we've heard from kind of different people at various times on this commission. They've come in kind of with frustration about affordable housing in Amherst from arrays of dealing with landlords, dealing with just what people would consider affordable housing. And so there hasn't really been much of an effort on the town side to fully kind of grasp the problem and understanding. And so that's what these commissions or committees and commissions are trying to do is come together to have a space where residents can come in, speak their mind freely, kind of give general topics and ideas of them that way we can go back and report out to town council to be like this was a heavy topic that was talked about in a ray of groups. And this is something you should definitely look at from residents perspectives. And so that's kind of the idea of the space that in its initial planning is trying to be planned on. And so this is the 20th from 630 to eight o'clock to the bang center so in person meeting and again so when we have that more narrowed out Jen is actually the flyer out yet or no. Yes. All right, well, let's make sure if we could email the flyer to the commission and that way everybody can kind of spread it out to their various groups to get people attention on it. I would just also add that I don't have the questions in front of me but there are three questions that are being asked. And so you can kind of prepare yourself for the topics for the conversation ahead of time by answering the three questions are having the three questions which if you go to one I send the flyer there's a QR code that brings you to the affordable housing trust page. And there you can fill out you can answer the three questions all, you know, all submissions are anonymous so that's really good too. But those basically there's just three or four questions to try to keep it structured so people will be broken up into groups at the event and answer the three questions. And so we would like to have childcare and translation services if needed there are some funds for that. So the main people spearheading that is our affordable housing trust. Are they a committee commission committee in town and we are co sponsoring with them. Any questions on that anything. No, already. Anybody else have any other report out to me numbers. Anything not seen any. All right, so the next agenda item is last week we spent a array of hours with each other. Any, anything's kind of up for game I mean, we don't have, I think everybody that was on that call here but kind of general take a ways anything you want to talk about anything you want to say about our town council meeting, town council meeting with CSS Tracy. Tyler. Yeah, I think we like almost made it to it but we didn't quite really get to talking about the planned youth empowerment center. And that was kind of like one thing that I was sort of waiting to get brought up since I think that that now sort of needs to be looked at in the context of the news that's come out on Amherst regional middle school. The article in the graphic of course the one that kind of broke the whole thing open and a full blown title nine complaint which I haven't really heard of those against middle schools before which kind of emphasizes the gravity of it that now it's going to a federal agency responsible for enforcement of one of this country's most serious non discrimination directives. And of course that article has now been picked up by the Hampshire County Gazette and I'm sure some of the other news outlets have picked it up as well. Obviously it's a huge issue for parents and of course a massive issue for the kids impacted by it. So I think in the context of the youth empowerment center we probably do need to be making sure that this is something that's going to be actually empowering something that needs to facilitate safer spaces for kids going through this sort of stuff because these are middle schoolers and it's that sort of thing it's going to have a massive impact on them for years. And then I think also we probably need a separate conversation about Amherst regional middle school because the scope of these rights violations are just. I can't think of very many laws that weren't violated at some point or another by what they did because they broke separation of church and state so that's First Amendment right there. So you've got massive discrimination and they're facilitating bullying so now we're starting to see a bit of negligence, honestly. And the, I also found the graphics on the the graphic article a little troubling because they have graphics of torn down posters for clubs for LGBTQ plus students in Amherst regional middle school a torn down posters for supporting trans rights. And I'm somewhat concerned that they didn't really talk about in the article but I'm somewhat concerned if they could also be a broader freedom of speech issue, which would be a pretty big deal I mean that would end up landing in the First Amendment violation to go be does more. So, I think, honestly, this kind of needs a full investigation into it. And I think that that might be something that some of the school oversight committees potentially even county level or state level I don't really know how the schools end up being funded and who ends up ultimately being the buck stops here for it, but there definitely need to be investigations into that. Thank you for bringing that up and I think it's important to highlight the title nine investigation that it is going to be a separate body outside of the school so I think that that is a great move on that and just for transparency and less bias on that and rather than have a school committee or anybody else affiliated with the school investigate. Ronnie. I'm just going to say Tyler that that was extremely well stated and do to everything you said I was outraged to read about it, but anyway, yes, yes, yes, I think you're completely on target. I had another comment just a reflection on the, what we the big meeting that we had. Because it was so long and the process was so deep and in a way it had to be because I think the town council felt like they weren't. We were telling them they weren't listening to us and they wanted to be sure they listened and I think it was set up to make sure we all got to talk but we had 25 people and seven big agenda items. So that I think that's one of the reasons important things got left be left out because I know that I myself after 11 o'clock I couldn't even think. So, on reflection. I think we missed like some of the very specific kinds of recommendations that could be done without all this politicking and without budget changes and Union recommendations. And I don't know if there's any way at this point to go back and say, for example, you know the recommendations from the leap report, you know things like stop consent searches. You don't need to negotiate with the Union to do that. You don't need a budget revision to do that you can just decide you're going to do that. So, I think there are actions like that, that sort of got lost that are very doable, you know, quick wins things you do. You do immediately because you want to, and you don't need any other bigger change to happen. So I was thinking of the consent searches and also the low level what they call the low level and pretextual stops. You know the leap report is very clear it gives you these things you can do today and we lost that and I would really like to find a way to get back to that because there are those kinds of things. At the same time we were talking about these bigger issues of racism and so on. So it all got muddled in that and we lost the opportunity to do the specific and maybe we should have put these in our part of the report because from our standpoint. You know there is a violation of rights happening that we need to be able to address and if we look at it just that way it's pretty clear that there are things they can do the more they could do. So I guess I do have a, I felt bad that we didn't get to these small things. And I'm wondering if there's any way to get that out to them at this point. I want to answer that. I mean, I know that CSSJC or other groups, we can always like write a letter, go sign a letter and or just write one for the Human Rights Commission, and just send that out like very specific like in the leap report line item. This is what we would like to see. Doesn't seem like it needs a negotiation. Could this happen like tomorrow and see what the responses. I think that that's probably going to be the best way but I do want to point out and circle back around to your first part of it that there was a lot of politics and going around it. And that's kind of the nature of these topics and this conversation like even with trying to set up this co meeting. The first suggestion was that we do it out of town council meeting where they have other agenda items and a lot an hour timeframe for this conversation. And the co chairs of both committees counter back that we didn't think that that would be feasible just given the nature of all of our other conversations and topics with them that probably a two hour to three hour long conversation with the agenda item being that topic would be appropriate for this conversation otherwise we're just kind of setting ourselves up for failure to be later into the night because if that was the case we wouldn't have started until eight o'clock at night with that conversation and that would have dragged on till it really hours in the morning and then to your point really not narrowing on the suspects of what's in the actual report so I do think that these conversations need to be really looked at and in a way that is a little more productive into getting what it is and I will recognize on the town council's end and this is I guess I don't know on who's fault of the motion but on whoever on the motion that town council didn't get to discuss any of the things from the town manager report until that night so that was their first time and their first take at discussing it in an open public forum so that may not have been the best setup there because we were getting reactions to the report as well and we had the benefit of meeting two times prior to kind of fluff out some stuff and get things more narrowed in so I think that overall what I would suggest is that if we have another meeting and it's no secret I think maybe Deborah I don't think that I shared this but I will be leaving the commission in July that if it moves forward in a way I would suggest that we have a meeting where it's only that line item or like suspicious item just like we did and also I really do appreciate the way that the meeting was held and ran I think Michelle did a great job at giving space for the committees to speak and I do have to say on town council president lens parts for her ability to step away and allow that to happen I will recognize that was a great leadership move on her end as well so I do appreciate the way the meeting was ran I just do think that yes there needs to be a way to wear some conversations that were also brought up dragged on a little bit longer than probably they should have been we might have got to the empowerment so maybe having a way that co-chairs or the facilitator can narrow in and get us back on track to okay this conversation can happen at a later date let's narrow in on the youth empowerment center or whatever it be so anyways long with any winded answer to all that I would be in full support of now we can't go right now but of a letter coming about to kind of narrow in on what we would like to be more specific about on the leap report anybody else have any other comments about my hand is up I just want to say is I'm hearing multiple layers of complexity one is and forgive me I'm new here are you saying that the town council actually makes decisions about what police officers can and can't do I mean most municipalities there's a police commissioner sometimes that commissioner is the mayor I don't understand why that discussion was happening with the town council right so they go through a collective bargaining agreement and Pamela please step in if I misspeak at all and so that is done through negotiations of their union and is it the town's attorney or I'm sorry to interrupt but Ronnie said something about a host of issues that could be addressed that were outside the scope of the collective bargaining agreement fyi I'm also a lawyer and I worked in the labor movement for many years so I there's a lot of things that I do know I just don't know what how things work in Amherst yet so we don't don't you don't need to educate me now I'm just trying to say that it would be helpful if I come on board to get clarity about where authority lies for different decisions in your system in our system and clarity about why certain discussions are happening at the town council that maybe don't even belong there and where that's going to add time and bureaucracy where it doesn't need to be so in addition to those items that could be put in a letter like is there a decider other than town council who could move more efficiently that's my question. So the answer is that town manager when the police chief would have the ability to make those decisions and it. This matter was before the town council in in part because. Members of the community were dissatisfied with the actions of the town manager and the police chief following the July fifth incident. But I say that in part because as Ronnie has pointed out the leap report predates that and all of the town council members I believe have seen the leap report and all of those reports so they have access to that. To that information I. So I would say that I think it was primarily before the town council, because community members members of the two joint committees wanted to stress and emphasize their points on these various initiatives where they felt like town council was not directing the town manager in a very expeditious way. Thank you. So, just in terms of onboarding, like the leap or lead report. I'd love to see that I'd love to see some kind of org chart that describes decision making authority and who's accountable to whom. And I'd love to know maybe this needs a conversation. What, what the scope of authority is at the lowest level possible that so that we can push our agenda as quickly as possible. So I can, I'll make a note to send you links to the website for the CSS JC all of those reports are there online, and also the town shorter so the town form of government changed and general have to fill in on the exact day. Has it been three years or four. They were voted in on 2018 to start in 2019. Yeah. So, prior to the change in government. There was a town meeting. And, and borders to that board of select. Yeah. And so now they have a new structure, which models the structure authorized by law in Massachusetts so that even though we're the town of Amherst, we have a city form of government which so we don't have a mayor but we have the town manager and then we have elected town council. So that, you know, as you know, in theory that town council is the is the legislative branch and the town manager is the executive branch. But, you know, in a small town, those roles really get a little bit muddied in, but the I remember there was a resolution from the town council requiring the town manager to provide an update on these items. And that is also why it was back in the town council. And we Jen and I are happy to meet with you and give you, you know, more information and all the reports and stuff. Thank you. I think it might be helpful for context wise and you can access this information or we can send it to either way or both right but so after in the wake of the murder of George Floyd the town council had the opportunity for the town manager to create a community safety working group that was going to look at policing and how policing could be better and out of the CSWG's work came about six or seven recommendations. And so two of those recommendations have come to fruition, which was an alternative police department which is the community responders for equity safety and service and a DEI department. So those two things came what else is on the other recommendations are youth empowerment center, multicultural center, creating an anti racist local government right so that all employees but particularly it is noted for the police department to become anti racist and then and then I think the rest of the recommendations really are reflected of the police department like to stop pretextual. I don't even know I said that right pre textual stops and so the CSWG hired two consultants one was the leap which is the law. I don't remember all of the acronyms because we've way too many acronyms in this team in this town but so leap and so they came and they basically they went through all of the policies and procedures of the police department and kind of came up with an an analyze like what could be what changes would be beneficial. Part of that was to support Cress and like kind of gave a roadmap how Cress can move forward. And then there were sevens Jen who worked more with the community members and they did a report which is how we're kind of where DEI came from and you know the conversations about lack of trust in the police department with some of the community members so there's it's all kind of this is all kind of like a trickle down. I don't think that's right trickle down from the community safety working groups recommendations, and then you have what happened on July 5 which only, you know. I'm happy to email those to you tomorrow they can also be found if you just go to Amherst MA.gov. And if you go to your government and it should say like boards and committees a through Z and then see Community Safety Social Justice Committee has links that bring you to all of those reports. So there are three, four reports total. There's a part a part B from the community safety working group and then there's a leap report and seventh gen report. So that just is kind of like the background from where all of this is coming from. Great, I feel really guilty that my question took up so much airtime so but I really appreciate your thorough responses. Don't don't feel guilty at all. I think your questions important because it raises. It helps to understand and I had to read all these reports to start to get it myself that there's a very complex sort of context in Amherst there are historic relationships. There are perceptions, like after George Floyd people told me that they were really shocked, not only by that it happened but they never imagined something like that anything even close to that would happen here. And I think the July 5 incident happened people were like, Oh my God, not our nice police. And then I think that there's just not. There's a whole part of Amherst that's just, that's nice. Believes in the right things and says the right things but just wasn't very clued into what's going on and what these reports did was that they provided data qualitative and quantitative data that said this is what's going on in our community and I think that now I'm going into my own theory. I think you know we were asking I was asking like, you've got it all here you've got the experts why don't you follow the recommendations. Well, it's because there's more to it I think all of that really touched people in this community very deeply that this feeling of is this really us are our police doing this to our kids just because they're Cambodian or African American or whatever. So I've heard some of that kind of discussion I think it's really very complicated actually here, even though when I moved here, you know I thought oh progressive Amherst, but it's it's changing. It's, demographically it's changing in very big ways or change started changing before I got here obviously but it's changing from its historic roots. I think there are lots of things going on with power structures in this town, which makes this a great commission to be part of. Thank you for that Ronnie. Oh, so. Sorry, I was pontificating again. Oh my God you have to shut me up. But so what I was getting to was the police, because when we got to the end. You know press was talking about what they're doing, and there was nothing there about taking over the component of police work that dealt with nonviolent calls and that's really what I understood to be their mandate. And because they're new and they're doing all this new finding their own pathway. I don't know I felt like that conversation wasn't very full because it happened late at night. And that's why the police action piece got lost in the bigger piece about racism. It's great to point out Ronnie I think I think you are correct. The conversation definitely got cut off and I think, yeah, towards some point of the night I think all of our minds start to drift off somewhere and so definitely does happen. So I have one more question. I don't nobody's respond now but it would be wonderful for me if there was some data. I know in Portland there was a study done of all the reasons that police responded to calls and turns out that 13% were and 87% or not. And so that gave to me, like a perfect analysis of okay you can reduce the police budget by 87% and move over that that work to the equivalent of Chris in Portland. It would be great for me to know in Amherst, what do police officers respond to, what does their work consist of, and what is it what is nonviolent police activity, you know mean, like, is it delineated are there 10 subject areas are there 100 subject areas where the folks in crest hired to address 100 different things or yeah so that kind of background would be really helpful for me. It does it's in the leap report so the, about 20% of the calls are calls that deal with more social work aspects of the job right responding to things that are non criminal so I'm just amazed it's exactly the opposite. Amherst in Portland, Oregon. Wow. Anybody else have anything. Nope. I think that that if you were to look deeply at the analysis of the work of the police department it would probably look very similar to to Portland. No police officer in Amherst has used a weapon in what a decade. Right. So what is serious crime here is, you know, very is really very different so I think. I have not reviewed them but I'm told that deep somewhere on the police department of website are all of that, those statistics and stuff but they're also in the loop. Thank you Pamela. Yeah I think that in this conversation, the highlight of this commission, and it's work is to be almost in the know and to kind of keep asking these questions and questions and keep kind of figuring out what is to diverse point, who is the person that you kind of need to go poke in that situation because there are a lot of avenues that you can take, and some are more fruitful than others. And so with that I think that we can move on to the next agenda items so we have an update for bylaws I don't think there's much of an update but Pamela. There isn't much of an update I did share with our town council, all of the suggestions that came from the subcommittee so that was Phillip Ronnie and Tyler. I had a initial conversation with her and I'm hoping to try to get her attention again, because I think you know there's a real need for us to try to finalize this this year to update the bylaws so the town manager did tell me that this is the busiest time of year for their law firm because they represent like I think over 200 cities and towns in the Commonwealth. So it's, it's hard to get her attention but she is aware of our needs, and I did send her that information. I wonder whether with regards to the bylaws and it sounds like they haven't looked at it in depth yet so there might be some merit in doing another round of the review of the bylaw before we get it out just to make sure that we didn't miss anything in broader council reviews since the bylaw we made the changes with just three of us we didn't even really spend as much time going over all of those changes and so we're trying to get it out but if they're not really looking at it thoroughly anyway then I wonder if there's time for us to look over again since most likely this bylaw won't get amended again for another five 1015 years so we might as well we have more time to work on it make it more robust. So I think the answer to that is yes. And the one thing that I would say that the subcommittee focused on was the language of the bylaw. I don't, I don't know if any decisions were made about the procedure that the HRC would follow and other than that like the suggestions that I had sort of made during the HRC retreat so so yeah I think that's a good idea. Yeah, I like that idea and I think Ronnie I think I saw a thumbs up from you as well. I think if all three of us could find time with the gender panel or both of you. To kind of go through that, that'd be great. I would really make time for that. I will send out an email about that after this. Let's see. Anybody have anything else about bylaws. Alright so the next thing that we have on our agenda is a letter that we were asked to look over and see if we wanted to support. Although I don't think that we are going to get that accomplished tonight being that there's not a quorum. So, I will get back to the supporters and just let them know that on our end. We did not have a quorum and so to move forward with it because I think it was time sensitive on their end for us to sign on to it. The next one that I have is the youth hero awards and the basketball tournament so I believe everybody is new on this call and may not be familiar with the youth hero awards. So what we do at the youth hero awards is kind of highlight our youth in town that have done any type of social justice type thing we've had people like sell cupcakes and donate to local survival center. We have people created like local library type things and so on our way of things it's really a way just to highlight our youth and encourage them to keep on, you know becoming the next human right commissioners are the next people on the CSSGC committees. So those nominations come in. I believe they are live right now I did see some stuff and I know that I did share it on social media so I don't know any youth or know of someone who works with youth that would like to highlight anybody and nominate them for youth hero award. It's a fun little ceremony. There's a write up that happens Liz. Hey good usually does that write up and will hopefully be announcing them that day. I do have a different update about it but I just wanted to say since she's not here and Juliana has left the commission she actually gave her resignation that the 10th was going to be her last meeting. I think that somebody should nominate her as well victor's already been nominated and I actually have received the majority of the nominations are for the students who wrote the article in the graphic so there's like 60 of them, and that I've received 60 nominations for that group. And then somewhere in all of that are, you know, like victors and there's a classroom at Fort River. So I kind of have to read through those but it's great. It's a great day in events. The update on it is that we are also going to work with the race amity. So today, the organizers for that to be included in the youth hero wars portion of it or throughout the day. So it's really a full day of entertainment so there's like a couple of different components because there's the basketball tournament piece which it's like how does that fit in. So, as we did last year, the youth here awards were really pretty it was pretty small. And so, last year we worked with the hairy, the Julius Ford Harriet Tubman Tubman healthy living community. And they did a basketball tournament at the same time that we did the human rights youth here awards and it really created this nice community event where just people who you wouldn't have necessarily seen next to each thing and dancing, we're all together and so, you know, that is community and how we like to define or how I like to define, define community. So, it's a kind of and also that basketball tournament prior to last year was being supported by just two community members but yet it fed a lot of, you know, families for the day and so it's kind of a way to take some of the burden off of the organizers of the original basketball, and also highlight our youth all kind of in the same time. And then, because we're having an on 11th, which is race amity day, or the celebration of race amity day. We kind of bumped heads with their events and so we've now decided to just combined the whole day because a lot of what race amity day is doing is it coincides with the youth here awards. And the mission is very much the same. So, this is June 11 starts at 10, we end at five will also have departments there. You know, it's a full day lunch basketball games, kids activities, Amherst recreational be there with, you know, different sports activities for the kids and arts and crafts and the library will be there so it's, you know, I'm hoping that, you know, we get people from other departments to come out and so people can realize like town employees, we're people too right like, we like to do things like you know, play basketball and stuff like that too so. Yeah, it was a last year was a full day of really celebration and I think, Jen hit the nail on the head there with that. A lot of community members that you would not expect coming together and just having a conversation and watching a game and you have a high lighting youth in our community it's it's a really great event and a really good day, and I mean you can't go wrong when you're giving out free food. So that's always a crowd bringer and but yes, so if everybody can mark their calendars for that day, June, I was going to say July, not July, June 11. I'm glad that the event starts at 10 but we always need help setting up. So, and then the event is probably over by four but we always need a little bit of help cleaning up right so location, you didn't mention Mill River. I've got that memorized now. Deborah. Yeah, thanks. Jennifer you've already trained me I looked this up, and I found the document, but it doesn't say what age youth is so who's eligible for the award. So no, well it if I thought somewhere in the, in the, not in the nomination form but in the opening letter, it should state that kids from there are three, you know, one from each elementary, you know kids from each elementary school, kids from the middle school and kids from the high school. And so even if the kids are living in lever and shoots Barry if they're at Amherst high they two are also eligible to be to be youth heroes. So basically I would say just to be safe under 19, maybe 20. Right. Thank you for your question and thank you for clarifying that Jen. As far as Juliana I'll take your Juliana nomination I definitely think she should be nominated for her time with us. Any other questions on that, or some members able to come to that I don't want to put you on the spot or anything I know June it's a little bit away, but I plan to come it's on my calendar. Awesome. All right, and then the following week. Is it the following week Jen, you have the following week we have June 10 so it'll be to our June, I don't know why I keep on the same July, June 11, June 11 will be youth hero award and then the following week week will be June 10 then that day are we doing anything that Saturday with the ancestral bridges walk or anything. I mean I would suggest that members go to support the ancestral bridges equally as they come to support the jubilee on the common. And so the two events are separate but we support each other, you know, through the weekends and so that it becomes a, you know, weekend worth of events. So I also know that Amber cinema will be showing fences for free at them at the theater. And I, I don't know what else they're doing for the plan but I believe that they're having an event they're, they're showing a movie on Sunday so it's like an events worth events all weekend with the Juneteenth theme. And Juneteenth will be the 19th, which is the Monday of that week so and that will be on the town common. Last year was a really great event that I will give kudos to Jen for I know that the Human Rights Commission name was on it by Jen you really pulled off that event and so thank you so much. There was performances and food trucks happening it was it was just a really fun and lively event there and we plan to have the same type of setup as well. Do we know vendors that are coming yet or do we still have to reach out. This year I have someone to work with me Laverne has been so graciously working with me and you know reaching out to the different craft vendors and the different food vendors. And so, you know it'll be very much the same, you know the theme is always support black businesses so one side of the common is lined with craft vendors who you know black and Afro indigenous and Afro Latino craft vendors and the other side is lined with foods from black restaurant, you know, afro afro American restaurants and Caribbean restaurants. So it, you know, and you're buying the food it's the one time that we host an event where people need to purchase the food. There's lots of reasons one we could never purchase enough food to free to feed everybody on the common. And that's in that way. But, and we would actually be doing a disservice to the food vendors because they could make more money if they sold their own food to be noted like if people if it's a hardship for people and they're hungry and they need to eat some of the money I'm sure like they can come see myself or Laverne one of the organizers and we can work something out but the general and I don't know if I should really say that but the general feel is that we're, we're people who need to buy the food to support the businesses because that's what the day is scheduled for right, supporting businesses and letting their names get out there. Unfortunately, they're not most of the businesses are out of Springfield which that's a wonderful thing but we have to get them from some, you know, from Connecticut from Springfield because we here, Amherst Hadley North Hampton don't have as many to support the event on its own so and then DJ wise is it going to be Pete and yeah. Yeah, so Pete is our annual MC so Pete is also DJ. He's a he's a he is the head facilities person over at Wildwood so it's really nice to have him because the kids get to see him in this whole entire different context which is like another really good way of bringing community together like oh I saw Pete as you know so it's just really nice he really likes working with the kids and seeing the kids so he will be our master MC. He will also be DJing along with Ben, who's also a DJ, but you guys didn't know that one either see. And so it's just, it's just a great good feeling day you know the Amherst gospel choir will come and sing and help open us up. And we have some great performances that are that are coming in the high school is going to come their dance team will come and do a step show which I'm so excited about. I love a good step show I mean that's just fantastic and so we have a main headliner I'm not ready to announce them yet but we have our main headliner and so that's really great that you know and as the event keeps happening this is our third event and it gets bigger and bigger we get a lot more support behind it and so that's also really helpful as well. So, I'm just super excited and then I'm going on vacation after Juneteenth, because I don't know it's a lot of stuff. Do we have the 54 regiment. So, the majority of them are in Springfield so I know that they're going to be here for for Saturday. And so because we're not the direct next day. We're still working on those kind of details and it would be nice for them to do a kind of performance in the same way that they do for ancestral bridges so we have to really figure that out. So doing, I've been working with the curator at the Jones library and Sarah bar from Amherst College, and Anika lobes on a timeline of the, of the black community and Amherst, you know since Amherst is defined from Hadley and 1752 I think which is something I learned it's like, it's why I love this job because you learn something every day, but like I didn't know like self Hadley nor we were all part of Hadley right and then we, we all divided off. And so we're just going to kind of do a timeline the goal is to have. You know, instead of having a program that people get to go home with they have like either a little passport I can't figure out if it's passport or a green book, where they get to stamp, you know, each time period that they've been and they visited the next one and they get to stamp so it's a self guided tour. It's really meant for those people who we don't necessarily anticipate coming to the common but they went to grab a slice they heard the music they came over. And so that way they have a full explanation of what Juneteenth actually is versus oh they're celebrating Juneteenth right like this is what we are celebrating here. And so that's, I'm really excited about that. Yeah, no that's that's a really great thing and just to be the chair for a moment that is a big essential in our bylaws of the education piece in town so I fully support that. Anybody have any questions for Juneteenth. All right, well mark your calendars on that day. I would just, I would just add that it's a really hands on deck day so as many people who can come and participate that is greatly needed I think Phillip and I for a few years have, and then, along with Pamela have been holding a lot of these events that have hundreds of people and then it's like the three of us so it would be great if folks can come and bring your friends to right like to help my children come. Phillip's wife comes Pamela's friends come to help us all kind of set up because it's a lot of work. I'm so sorry but I have to travel that date I was like no getting away from it. I was very active in Juneteenth last year when with working with the historical museum actually and enjoyed it very much and I do feel very bad I reserved the weekend I actually postponed things so I wouldn't travel to Monday and I think I didn't have. I had it in my mind that it was the weekend not the Monday. Yeah, yeah, I feel sad that I will miss it but I can't change things now. So I'm afraid I won't be able to help on that day but I can try to help before if needed. I guess just to really acknowledge really quick. Juliana to why I think she'd be going back to the youth here awards. Great nomination is because she did put together along with Jen, the API month celebration that we had a couple weeks ago and that was a really big turnout and few community members came to me and I think with all these events, a lot of community members come to me and say, I guess that the town's putting on this event like I feel really seen I feel really validated and like knowing that like my culture is being represented, even one elderly person at the API month said, oh this is great that the town's doing it and isn't expecting like us to do it for ourselves. I think that that messaging is really strong and like so needed for our town just to have these events and to Jen's point like it just becomes a regular thing to where more and more people are helping out to organize for different organizations, different committees, different, whoever so that way all the burden doesn't just fall on a few individuals. We like to joke me and my partner that she's an honorary HRC member with some of the events she helps out with there. Yes, if you can make it. That'd be wonderful. And yes, that'd be great. One other thing that I was going to say about, did I say hand go up or no. No hand. Okay. Kind of close out and go to public comment I do see one person in the public so maybe is that the reality of the HRC since I have been on has struggled to get a form as you see tonight on the call. The three newest members are here much appreciated. And we have a potential new member coming in. Deborah, who will also be here so we are trying to fill up the seats we do have a lot of vacancies coming up. Juliana is gone. Cedric will be done. I will be leaving. And I don't know about Liz and Ben. I know their, their term is coming up but I don't know that if they have signed on to be back on Invictor, I imagine we'll be leaving because he is going to be leaving the area single because he will be graduating. I wonder if there's a forum to publicize our work and who we are to attract more candidates. This is so important, especially now this work is really important and I don't know how many people are aware if you go to the town site. You know, there are dozens of these things. So I actually don't know if there's something we could put a little little article about or I don't know what I mean I'm not a communications expert but so I always go to writing a piece in the newspaper because that's what I do. But I wonder if we could give some thought to and if somebody wants to take some time to talk with me about it. So I can help. I'd be willing to help do that but I think we need to make the work of this commission known so that people want to join it. And they're not just feeling like. Okay, I'll join that one. Yeah, that's that's a good point. I mean that was one thing when I came on that by assessed and solid really tried to make the HRC known in town I know that recently we, I guess this was a few months ago actually in the Indy. In the Amherst Indy we did an article. Ben and I just to kind of discuss and talk about work and I don't know how much headway that got or anything but I think that that's a great idea to try and see if we can access more members through that and I know that through the town in general that and correct me if I'm wrong Jenner Pamela, getting committee members for anything right now seems to be a hard task to do. I have another an idea just now which is that we're having these events where all these people are coming. Maybe we should say this is sponsored or co sponsored by whatever the appropriate term is by, you know, Human Rights Commission. I just did talk to one of us go to the website, join us something like that I don't know what the exact message would be but if people are coming to our events that seems like a place to recruit. So that's a good point I know on all of our advertisement we do put that it is co sponsored by the Human Rights Commission if not put on by the Human Rights Commission family you're going to say so. And the AA PI event, Angela, who like Jen is a community participation officer was there at a table, promoting this board and other boards but I think we can definitely do some additional promotion. The most recent round of individuals to apply what we were slated to have four interviews, the fourth person dropped out but there were three interviews and. And so there was, there was some interest from individuals and joining joining the committee, but I think that certainly we could do more to attract other people. Yeah, definitely and I know that this is just future knowledge just to knowledge dump from my time on this commission is that at one point we were a seven member commission so that then delegates a quorum to be four members on a call. We increased to nine because we were having issues with getting a quorum to see if that can make it more efficient but then your core number then turned into five members as opposed to four. And so looking over those things at various points would be great for the future of this commission. And I pass with that and I know that everybody is new but just to give you a little insight to my time as chair is that I joined officially in July of 2021 and became co chair of December of 2021 so it was a very fast turnaround, but a very needed thing to happen so with my departure co chair will be opening up so just something to think about in the back of the mind there. With that, let's go to public comment. We have anybody in the public that would like to speak. I would like to speak go ahead and raise your hand. I am not seeing a hand. So then we will be ending our meeting 748. Thank you everybody for joining our next meeting will be the third Wednesday of June which is that going to be the 21st after. Yep. All right well I guess we will see a lot of each other about that week there. Great. Yep. Thanks so much for your kind welcome everyone. Thank you for joining us. Laverne can, I mean people are welcome to stay on but I, I think we were, I just wanted to check in with you about a meeting time, because I know. Yeah we scheduled it for tomorrow at three. I think I had today at three. Oh really no I have tomorrow. Let me go back to my calendar. Yeah. Oh my gosh, I'm like, yeah, I'm, yeah, no, you're right tomorrow. I thought I missed a meeting with you and I was like all over my email like she would have emailed and been like are we meeting and I didn't see it. Yeah, because um, yeah, so I'll call some more people but like people aren't calling me back. So we'll talk about. Yeah, it gets a little tricky there's, there's um.